Diary of an Arcade Employee

Wuzzles! The Full Moon Review!

**One Monster’s continuing mission to explore strange new (old) cartoons. Shows he has never seen! Watched in small segments and reviewed immediately. No research! No rewinds! No shame! Join me as I embarrass myself for your reading pleasure. This is Full Moon Reviews!**

Ah The Wuzzles. Disneys animated series chronicling the adventures of lovable cartoon mutant animals. I’ve never in my life seen this show but I remember being aware that it existed as a kid. In fact, my grandmother (for some unknown reason) had a Stuffed Bumble Lion Toy. So it must have had some pretty wide exposure. The Bumble Lion still sits proudly on the shelf at my Grandmother’s and has held up pretty well…makes you wonder if the show has. Through the millions of geeky pod casts I listen to I have discovered that The…Wuzzles was in fact the very first Disney Afternoon Show and apparently the least loved. Let’s see if we can find out why?

The Wuzzles Episode 13: What’s Up Sox?
So right away we get some crazy mixed up animal wackiness! It’s fall which they illustrate by squirrels (I can’t remember what animal they were mixed with) “Throwing their nuts south for the winter” by “throwing” Disney meant hitting them with a baseball bat. Anyway, all the “muties” are getting ready for some kind of fun-festival thing which you need costumes for.

So, they go try on costumes but they have no money! (I’m already relating to this show) They sadly return to their weird decrepit house that for some reason has a crashed airplane stuck half-way into an upstairs window. Ladies and gentleman I think we’re gonna have ourselves a “comedic moneymaking schemes” episode! They’ve got a rummage sale and a pie stand going. The hippo/rabbit is running the pie stand and she keeps eating the pies (pan and all) The other animals are running the rummage sale where they are selling junk that they find in EleRoo’s pouch…kinda gross.

Both ideas fail the rabbit/hippo is such a glutton that she disgusts potential buyers and ultimately eats all the pies. The rummage sale proves that people don’t really want to buy things that were stored in body cavities. Dejected they all give up until they stumble upon a new creature moving to town. A wealthy, half tiger half raccoon named TiCoon! Get it?

Ticoon wants to become a zillionaire and has a money tree to back it up. The gang clearly wants the tree and are planning on giving him all their worldly possessions to win it and I think the rest of this show goes one of three ways: 1.) The TiCoon is a con-artist and is gonna take their crap in exchange for a fake money tree. 2.) The tree is real and one of our heroes is about to stack some mad cash! 3.) They all decide to rob TiCoon take his tree and maybe that sweet Monopoly Man outfit too!

So the money tree was actually real (by the way turns out they were buying a seed not a tree…it grew with cartoon speed though, so it’s a moot point) They literally emptied their houses of all of their stuff…the objects are amalgams too (think, refridge-laminator or pickup-trunk.) Since they all now own it, they came up with a timeshare deal. Unfortunately they all needed some greenbacks so they pruned the crap out of the tree and killed it.

They went and threatened TiCoon about the “defective” tree but he called them out on there mis”tree”tment and sent them on their way. TiCoon also told the obviously evil bad guys (Croc-a crocodile/…crocodile? And his two goons that just look like monsters) they followed him home, saw the tree and stole it. TiCoon of course thought that the Wuzzles stole the tree and went to confront them. Let’s see how they lay down justice where TiCoon’s from.

The Wuzzles explain that they didn’t take TiCoon’s tree and maybe it was the giant horrible alligator that he admitted being rich to. They all decide to gang up and make him “whish he never had money.” First they pretend like they’re looking for an oil well on his land. BumbleLion gets a fake “hit” on what appears to be a geiger counter and tell him if he drilled there he would be rich. Croc immediately has an oil drill somehow and hit’s a well! It’s not an oil well though…it’s an ink well!!

TiCoon has a better idea. A fake stock market scam! He makes sure Croc overhears a phone call with his stock broker where he finds out stocks are up!! He gets Croc to give him all his money to invest in the stock market. The narrator then explains to us that stocks are actually Stox…a part stork part ox creature which is for some reason not sentient like they are. This makes me wonder; if Stox are just weird barnyard-dwelling, mindless beasts, then why did Croc think you could invest in them like stocks?

The stocks land in Croc’s yard and irritate him. He gets mad at TiCoon and tells him “all of your ideas are nothing but trouble!” I’m not sure what “other” ideas he was talking about but at any rate he doesn’t give up the tree. So they decide to take it and get in a tug of war and destroy the last living money tree in existence. Everyone is sad but decide it just made them bad, greedy people, and decide to go as ghosts to the party after all.… TiCoon who was the only real victim in this thing (the Wuzzles ruined his life) says the tree was bad because it almost prevented him from having friends. The message being that friends after all are more important than money. Hey, not all the morals in these shows can be true!

I really liked this show and I wonder how I missed it all those years. It’s a typical 80’s/90’s furry animal cartoon. The character are sassy, with funny dialogue…there’s a nice variety of personalities. I feel like I’ve seen the bad guy in a million cartoons- The big ugly alligator with a country accent. But it’s a character that works. I’ll definitely be checking out a lot more episodes on the YouTube. If anything I wanna figure out what happened in this town that messed up all the animals like that. I mean come on, half rhino half monkey? …What a freak-show.

Dedicated fan of puppets, horror and classic animation. Fueled by nostalgia and driven to spread my own brand of "truth" to the fandom. Remember playing as a kid and trying to tell a coherent story with totally mismatched, unrelated toys? It's like that....of the mind!

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12 thoughts on “Wuzzles! The Full Moon Review!”

Dougsays:

While watching Disney’s Halloween Treat last Halloween, I noticed the similarity between Wuzzles and Woozles as well as the fact that Heffalumps look a lot like the elephant Wuzzle. Disney ripping off themselves, perhaps?

Wuzzles was originally a saturday morning cartoon, and an unfortunately short lived one. I loved it back in the day & watched it every week. It annoyed the hell out of me that it died off so quickly while other, more *blah* shows dragged on endlessly.

@Christopher I agree for something that I considered pretty obscure, this is quality. Guess that goes along with being a Disney show back when they cared.
@Adam I definitely would have as well!
@Drahken I agree. They have definitely left a few clunkers on way past their primes. The Wuzzles deserved more of a chance.

@Vic Thank you sir! and yes, the Wuzzles was a daunting task but I survived! I would definitely by Wuzzles the Complete Series!
@SaturdayWhirrled and Drahken- Yes…for a brief moment in time (the 80’s) Kids tv was allowed to be total junkfood with delightfully cheesy psa’s tacked on the end. What a glorious time!